Live Law: Mumbai: Saturday, March
11, 2017.
The Kerala
High Court has observed that account particulars or the financial information
of an account holder or any other information divulging of which results in an
unwarranted invasion of a member/account holder’s privacy cannot be treated as information
available for dissemination under the RTI Act.
Justice Dama
Seshadri Naidu was considering a batch of writ petitions by co-operative
societies challenging the state Information Commission order directing them to
provide information sought with respect to account particulars of its members.
The court
observed: “Citizens do have a right to get information, but they can have
access only to the information “held” by or is under the “control” of public
authorities. If the information is not statutorily accessible by a public
authority, as defined in Section 2(h) of the Act, evidently, that information
is not under the “control of the public authority”. Resultantly, it is
impossible for the citizens to access the information, not under the public
authority’s control. Citizens, in that event, can always claim a right to privacy;
a citizen’s right to access information should be respected, so also a
citizen’s right to privacy.”
The
judgment also discussed the ratio in the Supreme Court judgment in Thalappalam
Service Cooperative Bank Limited v. State of Kerala and summarised it as
follows:
1.
That a cooperative society is not a public authority
under Section 2 (h) of the Act;
2. The registrar or any other public authority is statutorily
enjoined to comply with “the obligations under the RTI Act and furnish
information to a citizen under the RTI Act”.
3.
The information the public authority can provide to an
applicant under the RTI Act is the information enumerated in Section 2(f) of
the RTI Act;
4.
The public authority can gather the required information from
a society on which he has “supervisory or administrative control under the
Cooperative Societies Act”.
5. The information to be provided by the public authority
must be subject to the limitations provided under Section 8 of the Act.
6.
The account particulars, or the financial information of
an account holder, or any other information divulging of which results in an
unwarranted invasion of a member/account holder’s privacy cannot be treated as
information available for dissemination under the RTI Act.
Last month
the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court has held that co-operative
institutions “need to supply” information under RTI Act, since it is a “public
authority” established under the Cooperative Societies Act.